Trevor Noah on ‘The Daily Show’ and His ‘Jewish Yoda,’ Jon Stewart

Like the mostly vacant canvas that once hung outside the Midtown Manhattan studios of “The Daily Show,” advertising his Sept. 28 debut date and not much else, the office that Trevor Noah works from was nearly barren on a recent visit. The walls were unadorned, and the bookshelves were unfilled, except for a sound system that Mr. Noah was setting up so he could listen to jazz while he worked on his material. Perhaps the room’s only other distinguishing feature was a row of three TV sets, tuned to the NY1, CNN and BBC news channels, inundating Mr. Noah, 31, with a stream of information from around the world.

“It’s empty and yet full,” Mr. Noah said of his surroundings, where he is already keeping busy and is about to get exponentially busier. On Monday, Mr. Noah takes over as host of “The Daily Show,” Comedy Central’s marquee news-satire series. He has the formidable task of succeeding Jon Stewart, who, over his 16-year tenure, helped transform the program from a garden-variety lampooning of events to a pointed and influential commentary on politics and the news media.

Mr. Noah, who was born and raised in apartheid-era South Africa by a black mother and a white father, built an international reputation as a standup comedian before the handful of “Daily Show” appearances that preceded the surprising announcement that Comedy Central had chosen him as its new anchor. The sparseness of his office reinforces the fact that, to American audiences, he is still a blank slate; the little data they have to fill it in includes a modest but enduring scandal that cropped up around Mr. Noah’s Twitter account, where he once posted jokes that some prospective viewers felt were offensive to Jews and women.

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Trevor Noah at “The Daily Show” offices in New York.CreditChad Batka for The New York Times

Mr. Noah still has the earnestness and even temperament of a host with zero episodes under his belt, but he is also confident that he is prepared to take command of “The Daily Show.” As he said in an interview: “When you get to fly a Boeing, it’s a Boeing. You’re going to need to practice. But I know how to fly planes. I’m better than no pilot, let me put it that way.” In these further excerpts from that conversation, Mr. Noah discusses his preparations to take over “The Daily Show,” the advice he’s received from Mr. Stewart and the further challenges that the program will face.

Q. What are you working on today?

A. Everything. We basically had five weeks to do what [Stephen] Colbert joked he had nine months to do. I’m willing to bet we had the shortest turnaround time of any reboot of any late-night show, which is an insane undertaking. Our goal is to get as close to the place we want to be and then build on that foundation.

I think, naturally, the show will be a representation of my interests, and the interests in the room. We all live in America. But as America is increasingly learning, if a butterfly flaps its wings on the Chinese stock exchange, there’s a good chance it affects America. Syria’s crisis has gone from the Syrian crisis to the Greek crisis to the European crisis. And very soon, it may now become an American crisis.

Will the 2016 presidential election still play a significant role in determining the tempo of the show?

Definitely. The world watches your election. We’re watching who you’re going to elect, because it often affects whether or not you’re going to invade our country.

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Mr. Noah appeared on Jon Stewart's final show as host.CreditBrad Barket/Getty Images for Comedy Central

When your “Daily Show” appointment was announced, I asked if you expected some kind of backlash. Do you think that’s what happened with your tweets?

[Laughs] I’m glad I answered yes. If you introduce a new organ into the body, there’s a good chance the body will reject it. I don’t care who they announced — there’s very few people who they would have said are taking over from Jon Stewart where I would have gone, “Good choice.” When something is good and you have to change, the visceral response in you is, “No.”

Do you think you had some responsibility here, that you should have cleaned up your old tweets?

To clean up your social media, what are you cleaning? When we hired the new correspondents at the show, they asked me, “Have we checked their social media?” I said, “This is a good exercise: You go through every single tweet and tell me what you think we should get rid of.” And people came back to me: “I don’t know, is this offensive? Is this not offensive? Is this bad?” Exactly. You do not know what may or may not offend somebody. People go, “Trevor, you should clean your tweets.” I go, I cleaned my life — I tried to grow as a human being. Someone goes, “Yeah, but you wrote this in 2009.” I go, well, thank God I didn’t write it in 2015. That to me is progress.

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Mr. Noah with his grandmother in a 2011 documentary, “You Laugh but It’s True.”CreditDavid Paul Meyer

Do you think you’re prejudged because of your race and your background?

I think people look at the surface. For instance, with one of the tweets, I wrote a joke about being fat. And then they were like, “He’s fat-shaming.” That tweet was about me. I’ve been fat before. I’ve suffered through depression and used food to comfort myself. I grew up in an abusive household where chocolate was my only solace. There was a time when I was in a relationship, and both myself and my girlfriend got extremely fat. And we joked about it. If I made a joke about poverty now, someone would go: “How dare you? Do you know what it’s like to be poor?” And I’ll be like, actually, I very much know what it’s like to be poor. Sometimes, I’m even shocked when I see where I grew up.

How so?

I don’t even think of my upbringing as that bad. But often, when I go back to my grandmother’s house in Soweto, I’ll go, how did seven of us sleep in this one room? And my gran goes, “We had to do it, so we did it.” I don’t remember it being this bad. I don’t remember the room being this small. I don’t remember the roads being this dusty. But it’s because that’s all you had at the time.

Do you think American viewers are particularly puzzled by you?

Yes. People need to define you quickly. Who’s the guy taking over from Jon Stewart? You cannot say, “I don’t know,” because that makes you seem uninformed, so you would rather rush to an opinion that may not be fully formed.

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Mr. Noah with Jamie Foxx at a Hamptons fund-raiser.CreditChristian Hansen for The New York Times

It turned out that before Comedy Central offered you the “Daily Show” job, it approached higher-profile stars like Chris Rock, Amy Poehler and Amy Schumer. Does that make you feel like the consolation prize?

It makes me feel great. My philosophy in life has always been to be like water. Try to find why what’s happening is helping you. It may not always be apparent. It may not always be easy to accept. I remember reading that Will Smith was supposed to get “The Matrix.” But then I was like, I don’t think I could picture anyone doing “The Matrix” better than Keanu Reeves. Had I been given the choice at the time — if they said, “You vote, Keanu Reeves or Will Smith?’ ” — I would have gone: “That is a stupid and obvious answer. I’m going to go with Will Smith.” And yet now I go, “No, he wouldn’t have worked.”

Wyatt Cenac, the former “Daily Show” correspondent, has talked about a heated fight that he and Jon Stewart had over racial content on the program. Do you think “The Daily Show” has a diversity problem?

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A childhood photograph of Mr. Noah.CreditDavid Paul Meyer

I wouldn’t call it a problem. I would call it a blind spot. A blind spot that Jon realized and started very actively pursuing. But there’s two types of racial blind spots. There’s active, and there’s passive. Active is you saying, “I will not hire black people or Hispanic people or females.” Passive is you going: “I’m open to everyone. I will hire anyone that comes in the door.” But you don’t realize you’re limited by your current network of who you know, and what you know is often [people like] you. When you’re cognizant of it, it’s easier to work on.

Is it still the case that “The Daily Show” has only one black writer?

Since I’ve joined, blackness has tremendously increased at the show. There’s been an epidemic of blackness. We’ve added on Baratunde Thurston, who’s heading up our digital division. You’ve got David Kibuuka, who’s from South Africa. You’ve got Joseph Opio, who’s from Uganda. We’ve hired additional women, as well. It’s something that I’m very cognizant of. Because I know how easy it is for a system to unwittingly fall prey to, let’s call it, an institutionalized segregation.

If you don’t become part of the thing that enables people to become the best, when will anyone get the opportunity to be the best? That is always the decision you have to make. Sometimes you go, hey, this person is a raw diamond. Maybe they don’t have as much experience — you know why they don’t have as much experience. So off the bat they’re at a disadvantage. But if you see in them the potential to become great, you give them the chance.

Until just a few days ago, the awnings outside this studio still had Jon Stewart’s name on them. Did that concern you?

Not at all. For me, to see Jon Stewart’s name brings great memories. I’m not going, “Get that name off!” There was no election — I didn’t beat him. My job is to get on TV and get the show where it needs to be. Those small things I don’t stress about. Stationery and signage means nothing to me.

Has Jon Stewart remained available to you as you prepare your show?

Jon’s always open to me. I know he left “The Daily Show” to be with his family, so the one thing I didn’t want to do is trick him into now running “The Daily Show” from his house. I’ve promised myself, I will only, only, only, only go to Jon when I’m completely stuck. But if I do it too early, I will never learn to do it myself.

What kind of advice has he given you so far?

Jon’s suggestions were very simple and yet very difficult to decipher. He’s like a Jewish Yoda. He said to me: “Make the best show that you feel needs to be made. And trust your discomfort.” The most amazing thing that Jon did was he didn’t give me a mandate. He didn’t say, “You need to make my show.” He specifically said: “Make your show. Make your best version of it.” I apply those teachings of Jon’s to everything that I’m doing.